CHAPTER XIV.

NEWS.

MR. WESLEY was right in saying that Mr. Cheriton might make up his mind to suffer persecution. He was also right in saying that religion was at a low ebb in the Church of England at that time.

With some most honorable exceptions, pastors seemed to content themselves with a perfunctory performance of such duties as they could not get rid of. They read prayers on a Sunday, when they could not afford a curate at less than a man-cook's wages to do it for them, preached now and then a moral essay, of which the substance was pretty much poor little Betty's—that it was pretty to be good and naughty to be bad—and too often spent the rest of the Lord's day in idle amusements, especially in card playing and light reading.

It was considered to show a want of taste, and even a want of good manners, to mention religion out of church, and any man who showed the least earnestness on the subject was at once dubbed an enthusiast, or suspected of being a dissenter.

Of course, there were honorable exceptions, as I said, among clergy and laity, and there were many humble souls who fed on the sincere milk of the word, and were comforted by those wonderful and glorious prayers which no indifference on the part of the reader could quite spoil.

Into the midst of this state of things descended the Wesleys, preaching the plain unvarnished truths of the Gospel, declaring all men lost sinners, with no way of escape but by personal repentance, and a personal acceptance of the salvation offered to all alike.

Preaching to the poor colliers and miners and others, who had been suffered to live like the brutes and perish like them, teaching them that they, even they, might and ought to sustain personal relations to the God who made them, and setting before them a wonderful ideal of personal purity and holiness, attainable to every one who would seek it in the right way. They did indeed preach deliverance to the captive, and opening the eyes to them that were blind. Doubtless there were among the converts many cases of delusion, many of mere animal excitement, and some of sheer hypocrisy, but no one who knows what was the state of such places as Kingswood and the mining villages in Cornwall, before and after the preaching of the Methodists, can doubt that the good done was greatly in excess of the evil.

Mr. Wesley had already been preaching for several years, and people had become in some degree used to his erratic course. But when Mr. Cheriton, the rector of St. Anne's, son of one of the best families in the country, and probable heir to a title—when he took to preaching faith and repentance, and "all that sort of thing," as Mrs. Cropsey said—his course caused a great sensation.

Still more, when he took to holding week-day services, giving lectures and teaching classes in the poorer parts of the parish, when he talked to the very children in the parish school about loving their Saviour. At first, the novelty of the thing brought many of the genteel people of the town to hear him, but they soon fell off. As the sexton said, they were willing to call them miserable sinners in the way of business, but it was another thing to hear themselves proved so, and to have plainly held up before them, in the clearest Scripture language, the consequences of continuing in such a course. So by degrees, the fine people fell off, and their pews stood empty Sunday after Sunday, while the free seats and those of the trades-people were always crowded.

Then the most outrageous stories were circulated about Mr. Cheriton. He was a drunkard and a gambler. He had half a dozen low intrigues on his hands with girls who came to his classes. He used his influence for the worst purposes, and had been thrashed by the father of one of his victims. We heard plenty of this sort of stuff, for Mrs. Thorpe's shop continued to be a rendezvous for all the fine people, notwithstanding her audacious conduct in taking in the poor preacher's wife.

Mrs. Cropsey, who disapproved vehemently of Mr. Cheriton's course for no particular reason except that Mr. Cropsey had never done so, tried her best to induce us to go with her to St. Nicholas' Church, where the congregation were certainly not disturbed by any extra earnestness on the part of the preacher. But we liked Mr. Cheriton too well to leave him.

We had taken to spending an hour, two or three days in the week, in the school. The old dame, who had been half blind and more than half deaf for a dozen years, had been persuaded to retire on a pension, paid out of Mr. Cheriton's own pocket, and a new mistress had been found in the person of a widowed sister of Mrs. Bunnell, Lady Throckmorton's humble companion. She was a woman of good education, and certainly made a great change in the parish school. The little maids really learned to read, to sew, and to spin, to keep themselves neat, and behave nicely in the church and in the street. It was even proposed to teach them to write, but such an outcry was made at this daring innovation * that the matter was dropped for the present.

* See Mrs. Hannah More's Letters.

I had a knitting class, and Amabel undertook to instruct some of the elder and more promising girls in fine work of various sorts, that they might be prepared to take places as nursery and dressing-maids.

Mr. Cheriton never came to the school while we were there, and, indeed, we saw much less of him than formerly. He was kept very busy and so were we, and I suppose a feeling of delicacy on his part might have had something to do with it. I had seen from the first how greatly he was taken with Amabel, and I presume he thought it would not be honorable for him to try to engage her affections in the absence of any of her relatives.

It was about the first of October, when a letter came from London with sad news. Amabel's step-mother was dead of a fever, taken it was supposed in court whither she had gone with several other fine ladies, to hear sentence pronounced upon a famous highwayman, who had been a terror to all travelers on the North Road for years. It seemed that several of the prisoners brought to the bar at the same time, were suffering from jail fever, and the infection spread to a number of the court officials and spectators, notwithstanding the sweet herbs placed, before them, to ward off such dangers. * Poor Lady Leighton carried the dreadful disease home to her little son, and the two died on the same day.

* See Howard's "Journal" and other memoirs of the time.

It Was not to be expected that Amabel should feel much sorrow for the death of her step-mother whom she had never seen, and who had held very little communication with her, but she grieved sadly over the little brother, about whom she had built many air-castles.

It seems that Mrs. Deborah had written to her brother concerning us, for Mrs. Thorpe received a letter at the same time, thanking her for her care of us, approving the measures taken for our education, and requesting her to continue her guardianship, till such time as the Mrs. Leightons should be able to receive us, or he should make arrangements for our coming to London.

"You will please see that Miss Corbet has her fair share of all my daughter's teachers and other advantages;" the letter concluded. "I consider her a sacred trust committed to my care by her father, who was my dear friend, and her mother, who rendered to my own daughter services which I can never repay. I wish my daughter to form no acquaintances at present." The no was emphasized. "And I wholly approve of your course in that matter, as related to me by my sister Deborah."

Sir Julius sent a sufficient sum to put us both into handsome deep mourning, and requested Mrs. Thorpe to supply us with a certain moderate monthly allowance of pocket money.

This letter put me entirely at my ease, with regard to my future position in life; more so than it would have done, had I known my man better. I have no doubt at all, that Sir Julius meant it at the time; but he was a man easily swayed by those about him, whether for good or